1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to tracking the attendance of persons at specific events, and more particularly to apparatus for and methods of utilizing fingerprint recognition and wireless technologies to gather data related to the presence of persons at particular locations and times.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Various equipment has been developed to determine that persons are present at specific locations and at specific times. In the context of schools, for example, it has long been known for teachers to mark on paper class lists whether or not a student is absent or tardy. The lists were collected and sent to a central office for processing. While paper lists and manual marking of them were satisfactory in the past, that process has become too time consuming and cumbersome for modern education requirements.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,075,455 discloses a prior time and attendance system that includes multiple fingerprint scanners. Data generated by each scanner as determined from the fingerprints of persons attending an event is transmitted directly to an associated computer and thence to a central template containing data about the persons expected to attend the event. The fingerprint data provided by a person is compared at the database to ascertain whether or not the person's scanned data matches the previously stored data. Although a major advance over the traditional paper class lists, the system of the U.S. Pat. No. 6,075,455 possesses the disadvantage of requiring a computer for each fingerprint scanner as well as wiring from each scanner to its computer. Other systems for school attendance recording may be seen in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,731,525; 5,459,305; 5,956,696; and 6,173,153.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,550,359 and 5,842,182 show non-fingerprint related techniques for determining time and attendance data.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,111,977 describes a hand-held portable fingerprint device that is used to enable or prevent access to a secured location.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,021,212; 6,848,052; and 6,850,632 teach various non-attendance related systems that use fingerprint scanning technologies.
Despite the numerous ways presently available for taking, storing, and recording attendance related data, there nevertheless remains a need for further improvements.